X-Men #174

Writer: Peter Milligan
Pencils: Salvador Larroca
Inks: Danny Miki

Plot:

Part four of the four-part “Bizarre Love Triangle”.

Comments:

I’ve been reading the X-Men on and off for years, have loved and hated them in all their incarnations, crossovers, an spin-offs-- but this latest issue of “X-Men” was pretty intruiging.

Mystique makes her first appearance since the cancellation of her own X-spinoff, and it is a pretty auspicious one. She wants to make amends for her past sins by joining the team, but the mutant-on-mutant psycho-drama that has been the trademark of the Xavier Institute definitely shines here as Mystique’s plea for salvation causes more havoc than, well, Havok.

Peter Milligan’s definitely captured the near-epic-scale soap opera feel-- I didn’t know I could care about these characters again but he’s come as close as anyone to sucking me back into the melodrama, and Salvador Larroca’s art just keeps getting better.

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

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